(I)NTERVIEW: Harvey Hubbell V

Harvey Hubbell V is many things; chief among them he is a documentary filmmaker. His work has won many awards, including the Gold World Medal for Comedy at The New York Festivals and multiple Emmys. Harvey has worked in many aspects of production, meandering the professional halls of commercial work and feature films (Mr. Deeds, BlackMale), but has found his home in the documentarian world. “Commercials are film-lies” Harvey says, “…documentaries are film-truth”. The search for that film truth has taken Mr. Hubbell all across the great United States, Poland, Peru, and beyond. Harvey’s continent-hoping habit has led him to identify as an “Itinerant Filmmaker”, which seems as fitting a moniker as any. The content of his films varies wildly, from taking a closer look at the amazing diversity of American culture, to the trials and tribulations of the low-budget filmmaker, but if you ask him there is a connecting thread that runs through them all. Harvey says “All I ever do is make the same film over and over again… about people, passion and looking for happiness”. Throughout our interview no word came up more often than happiness. Harvey has spent the last ten years working on Dislecksia: The Movie, a project that has some special significance to him. With this latest project he hopes to take an intimidating subject, wrought all with the complexities of neuroscience and social stigma, and “make a film so simple even policy-makers can understand it”. Harvey has also started a foundation called The Hubbell Difference Foundation, in which he hopes to use the powerful medium of film to help others find their happiness. The Hubbell name has a long and proud legacy of ingenuity, from electrical design, to astronomy and architecture, and Harvey is continuing that legacy with socially conscious, and entertaining, film-making. Harvey lives in Litchfield, Connecticut, on a 73-acre farm and his time is often occupied by hours of raw footage and, of course, chickens.